7 ms·

Learn Sanskrit Online

78 points by yati 13y ago

angryJohn 13y ago
I learnt sanskrit, when i was in school... very nice language actually.... I like reading short moral stories in sanskrit a lot.....!!!!
Ihmahr 13y ago
Php errors everywhere!
- r4vik 13y ago
  no, that's Sanskrit
r0h1n 13y ago
Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?
- s-topper 13y ago
  Why not?
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    There's nearly an infinite amount of knowledge in the world. And each of us has a finite amount of time. Why not is not an answer. Of what use is Sanskrit to anyone who learns it? P.S. I say this as a person who was forced to study Sanskrit in school for three years.
    - s-topper 13y ago
      >>>>>>>Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online? >>>>>>>>There's nearly an infinite amount of knowledge in the world. And each of us has a finite amount of time. Why not is not an answer. You can apply that flawed reasoning to pretty much everything. It would've been a perfectly valid question if you had said "Why would I want to learn Sanskrit?". Please don't universalize your opinion by saying things like why would anyone want to learn Sanskrit online or offline.
      - r0h1n 13y ago
        I maintain that very few people have a reason to learn Sanskrit. It is a dead/dying language that will add zero value besides the esoteric joy of knowing a language for the sake of knowing it. If you feel that is not the case, please elucidate your reasons. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
        svasan 13y ago
        And very few people have reason to learn LISP or programming languages, for that matter. (If we are generalizing, we might as well go the full length and include the entire world population) You seem to be mistaken that folks would learn a language for just the sake of knowing it. Far from it. Language is just a tool for communication of ideas. There have been some brilliant treatises, thoughts, ideas, and philosophies expressed in Sanskrit. Folks are more interested in accessing the thoughts and works in Sanskrit as opposed being infatuated with the technical aspects of the language.
    - eitally 13y ago
      As someone whose comparative religion BA was mostly spent comparing flavors of Indian religions, it was very helpful to have a basic understanding of Sanskrit. I don't "use" it now, but knowing it during the research phase of my life sure made the learning process smoother.
- ximeng 13y ago
  They try to answer that question here: http://www.learnsanskrit.org/introduction http://www.learnsanskrit.org/introduction "Its importance is plain: Sanskrit was once the most influential literary language in India, and texts written in the language could be understood by millions of people throughout the South Asian world. These texts contain profound meditations on every point on the spectrum of human concern: existence, reality, God, love, duty, marriage, war, sex, death, violence, laughter, beauty, perception, nature, anatomy, urbanity, ritual, desire, food, purpose, meaning, and language, among hundreds of others. Moreover, Sanskrit texts are the repository of non-modern modes of thought, and they present distinct conceptions of the world that are often at odds with the understanding we have today. By learning how people used to think, we better understand both ourselves and the world we have inherited. "By learning this language, you open the door to more than three thousand years of intellectual history, both in India and beyond."
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    > "By learning this language, you open the door to more than three thousand years of intellectual history, both in India and beyond." What does that even mean? Indian history, intellectual or not, isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators. As someone who was forced to learn Sanskrit in school for 3 years, I'll repeat: it has zero value unless you happen to be a researcher or a linguist.
    - chattoraj 13y ago
      >isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators Over-dramatizing the other guy's statement does not constitute a response. Even ignoring the religious angle, Sanskrit was the primary language of literature, science and philosophy in India for over a millennium. Surely a person might want to read some of that without being employed as a researcher. (And before you ask, most of it hasn't been translated and will probably never be translated. See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/pollock_pub/classics.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/pollock_... )
      - 13y ago
- primitivesuave 13y ago
  Many Hindus chant in Sanskrit for religious/ceremonial purposes, e.g. Chapter 15 of the Bhagavad Gita is often chanted before eating a meal (http://www.asitis.com/15/ http://www.asitis.com/15/). It's useful to understand what the Sanskrit words mean, although there are English translations for virtually all Sanskrit texts.
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    If you're talking about the shlokas most commonly recited by average people, they may amount to maybe 10-20 lines. Learning their meaning will take at best one hour of research/effort. Learning Sanskrit to understand the meaning of a shloka is like learning Latin because you came across 'Cogito, Ergo Sum' or 'Veni, Vidi, Vici' on some blog. Both are pointless overkill.
    - 1457389 13y ago
      This average people comment isn't consistent with what I am familiar with. I regularly come across people, especially in the older generations, who have memorized literally pages of verse that they may not necessarily understand fully. The older generations in general in India seem to be multilingual as a rule and deeply interested in Vedic philosophy and ancient Indian history. Case in point the recent success of those Shivva books.
- slaxman 13y ago
  I am a ployglot and know several indian and foreign languages. My favourite is Sanskrit. Why? Once I learnt Sanskrit, esp. the grammar, learning other languages was really easy. You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit.
  - chattoraj 13y ago
    > You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit. Your claims are a subset of the “everything comes from India” school of BSology.[1] German is related to Sanskrit but does not descend from it.[2] Finnish belongs to a different language family entirely.[3] [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5QgeCL1fs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5QgeCL1fs [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages
  - donniezazen 13y ago
    How do you practice or make yourself not forget the several languages you know? I find it really hard to be proficient in a language unless you live among native speakers?
    - srik 13y ago
      There is a small village in India which still speaks Sanskrit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattur
  - angerman 13y ago
    Could you please elaborate on this a little more? How did German and Finnish derive from Sanskrit? Could you give examples?
    - h1karu 13y ago
      Russian too.
- yati 13y ago
  From your comments, this is like asking "Why would someone, programmer or not, want to learn Lisp online?". The answer: because they want to, because they might find it interesting. They don't have to ask you. You may not like something, but that is your preference. Don't impose it on us.
  - melling 13y ago
    You can learn Lisp and do real work with it. It has commercial value. It's not some ancient dead language.
    - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
      Ah FUD against Sanskrit. Thought I would see those only in Indian politics. Nice to see that on HN too. Do you, the no-nonsense hyper-practical man, smirk at mathematicians who study pure theory?
      - melling 13y ago
        I was simply pointing out that the analogy is not a good one. I have no problem learning Sanskrit for the pure enjoyment.
        cscurmudgeon 13y ago
        Sanskrit is not a dead language. Enough with the FUD. At least it is more intellectual than current day colonial languages like Spanish.
    - yati 13y ago
      The parent has been commenting asking people why they want to learn Sanskrit when there is "infinitely many other" things to learn about. I bet that you can not learn Lisp and sail through a great programming career. And I really don't think Sanskrit is a "dead" language - it is important to far too many people to be called dead.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
- monster_group 13y ago
  For the sheer joy of it. I learnt Sanskrit in middle school formally yet superficially. About a year ago I decided I wanted to get rid of the 'superficial' part and devoured several Sanskrit grammar books including this website. It has been a very joyful journey and I feel very happy when I am able to read and understand the only Sanskrit newspaper in the world. I don't know about you but for me that's a good enough reason. Sometimes one makes the journey because the path is so much fun even though the destination may be uninteresting.
- cscurmudgeon 13y ago
  I imagine people like you breezing through life maximizing some objective function, never waiting to admire poetry or relish a moment, only to die at the end. Hyper-practical no-nonsense men questioning the value of everything for everyone. (The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons.)
  - ksk 13y ago
    >The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons. Okay, give me 10 reasons.
    - r0h1n 13y ago
      I'd be satisfied with 5. Maybe even 3.
    - trevelyan 13y ago
      (1) You are defusing a bomb, but the wires are tucked behind a casing on which there is a label written in Sanskrit and underlined in red. With only 2 minutes left before the bomb explodes, don't you wish you started the language earlier? (2) Women love Sanskrit. (3) You have a dream one day that seems more real than real. In it, you are standing in a desert and are approached by a man who seems intensely familiar. With a shock, you realize this is a flashback from a past life. And you know you would have something incredible to tell yourself... if only both of you spoke Sanskrit. (4) Academic research. (5) On a business trip to China, a question emerges about the etymological origins of certain Chinese characters, and whether they entered the language through Middle Indo-Aryan speakers. Flush with the answer from your knowledge of ancient Sanskrit, you are able to impress your hosts and secure the contract. (6) "Attention passengers, this is the captain speaking. While there is no need to worry, we do have to ask: is there anyone on this plane who happens to be a doctor, and also speaks Sanskrit?" (7) Your boss has outsourced development work on a new software platform to a team in Uttarakhand. The project was a disaster as predicted, but it is now essential to find someone - anyone - who is both local and able to read the commit log as well as Sanskrit-commented source code. (8) A software malfunction switches your phone's display and input languages to Sanskrit. Now how exactly are you planning to switch it back? And if you read Sanskrit, why would you ever want to? (9) You are working for Google, and tasked with organizing ALL of the world's information. (10) As a member of the TSA working to ensure aviation safety, you are responsible for screening Sanskrit speaking passengers, and conversing with them as part of general counter-terrorism screening measures. Can you really do that with only Pimsleur-level fluency?
- laichzeit0 13y ago
  Serious question, how many languages do you know and actively use? As someone who grew up bilingual I've found that there is a certain untranslatable element in any language, particular when it comes to poetry and humor. Why do you learn multiple programming languages? Why are there several types of text-editing systems? Put it to you this way: learning a new language can be as enlightening as learning functional programming for the first time in your life. Edit: I also want to add that I came across this website in the past http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html where the idea of a highly unambiguous natural language struck me as interesting. Sadly, I've subsequently read a lot of negative comments regarding "vedic" sciences here on HN. Something akin go what the Creationists have tried to do with the bible. But I nevertheless would like to spend a few months looking at Sanskrit grammar and making an opinion about it myself.
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    Okay, serious answer: I can read and write proficiently in English and Hindi. I can speak proficiently in Malayalam. I can understand or business-converse in Kannada. I can understand about 75% of Tamil conversations. I learned Sanskrit in school. I've tried at various points to learn both French and Spanish using Rosetta Stone, but I gave up after the initial few weeks, probably because I was doing it alone. Does that make me "qualified" to comment on this HN thread?
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      Depends on how you feel about the vedic "sciences."
- nkuttler 13y ago
  For the same reason you have other hobbies, they like it. You obviously wouldn't.
- ateevchopra 13y ago
  Because they say the knowledge of the whole universe is written in sanskrit in the vedas. Thousands of years the Indian sages researched about almost every topic and wrote this vedas. We would have been many years ahead if we could decode those teachings. Many lost, many still to be decoded. If people learn sanskrit, maybe someone will find its life purpose in this and do a big research on the old knowledge. Just saying. Anything is possible. knowledge is never in vain.
- RestlessMind 13y ago
  Why do you want to live? Questioning utility of anything in life is futile. People do what they do because they want to. Simple.
- jimgardener 13y ago
  Long time back I was interested in Indian Tantric stuff and found that most English translations (except those by Arthur Avalon) contained too many interpretations by the translator -some of them skewed :).So I got some original Sanskrit texts and tried to translate word by word .I couldn't progress much becoz you cannot understand the meaning of a sentence by just adding up the words- you need to learn the grammer.At that time I wished I had learned the language
- involans 13y ago
  Because it is an enjoyable pursuit. I would agree that it is not the most practical thing to do; but not everything need be practical. Incidentally - this course seems to be one of the better ones I've seen; it actually uses modern phonetic and segmental terminology instead of throwing people straight into sandhi with no explanation of why this happens.
- kops 13y ago
  As an Indian, 1. For the same reason as solving sudoku online i.e. for the joy of it. 2. Some interesting literature was written in Sanskrit. I may want to read that. 3. To be able to judge when a hindu preacher is bullshitting me. 4. To be able to critically analyze some of the religious stuff e.g. does the age of Sun god tally with what the modern physics tells us. 5. Its grammar expands my view of what is possible to express in a language. 6. For the same reason as pursuing archaeology. The words in a dead language can tell you a lot about the life when it was in common use. I see that you substantiate some of your views with a "P.S." that you were forced to learn it for 3 years. That means nothing. I learnt it for 5 years purely to pass exams but that hardly makes me qualified enough to start judging whether others should learn it or not. Nopes I don't know Sanskrit and it is not on my radar right now. But a while ago when I tried to learn German, faint memories from Sanskrit classes came quite handy(see #5 above).
  - the_af 13y ago
    "For the joy of it" is probably the most important motive. For archeology is also good, though I assume a serious student of ancient languages won't learn from online guides.
- mchaver 13y ago
  Because they might not have access to offline Sanskrit resources.
- tekalon 13y ago
  As someone that has been meaning to learn, its a beautiful language and beautiful script. My motivation comes from a love of ancient history, so being able to read original texts make me happy.
wslh 13y ago
If you liked this post you might like this incredible sanskrit web site: http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/en/english-home/ http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/en/english-home/ It includes translation of sacred texts.
jaseemabid 13y ago
I wish the duolingo guys hire this fellow and make it easy for all of us :/
deleted 13y ago
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Of_Prometheus 13y ago
This is a fantastic coincidence. Over the past few weeks, and especially today, my fiancée has been telling me how she has lost her familiarity with Sanskrit after many years. I've already showed her this website. The joy!
Techasura 13y ago
The point is what would you do after learning or may be spending real good amount of time with it, what is the real need. I learnt sanskrit for more than 6 years and have passed upto threeeteeya(an exam to test your sanskrit skill). When i learn something i should be able to converse about it with many people as i can and help spread the knowledge or information. But learning an old language like sanskrit. What i found after learning the language is there is a lot of history which doesn't fetch any real world gain to my career, my social life, my finances or even recognition from a worldwide community.
- chattoraj 13y ago
  Listen to this man. Anyone who studies a dead language for “real-world gain” will probably end up disappointed. The only real reason to learn is so you can read old books in that language. And you might get a few points of social prestige, but that alone generally won't make up for the hours and years you put into it.
- rational_indian 13y ago
  Tritiya just means third.
rlvesco7 13y ago
I always thought it was interesting that Sanskrit could almost be a computer language: http://uttishthabharata.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/sanskrit-programming/ http://uttishthabharata.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/sanskrit-pr...
wintageeil 13y ago
To people who wants to know how scientific Sanskrit language is and also about how we are missing it's essence: http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Sanskrit.htm http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Sanskrit.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cQ4hIG9w7c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cQ4hIG9w7c http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262393 http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262393 BTW, I am from OK and travelled to India in the context of ancient real values. Travelled to many parts of Himalayas and learned bit about the language, quite amazed how such a great language like Sanskrit really has lost its lime light. Many great prescriptions of Medicine, Science, and Astrology are hidden in the great language. I am not trying to convince anyone but just thought of sharing my thoughts. For those of you, who have learnt it at their schools mostly read it as subject, not really learned its real value.
tokenadult 13y ago
Oh, gosh, the usual Hindutva nonsense. Let me first of all dispel any notion that I don't like learning languages "for fun." See my Hacker News user profile for more details on what languages I have learned. I have learned enough facts about Sanskrit and the various languages that are written in the Devanagari alphabet to know 1) The written history of Sanskrit is much less that 3,000 years long. (The historiography of India is hard, because most of the writing materials used in ancient India were perishable, and thus much less preserved than the written records of other parts of the world that are equally old, but plainly the Vedas and other texts from ancient India are less than 3,000 years old.) 2) Yes, Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, which means it brings to mind features of other Indo-European languages. Each cognate language makes it easier to learn other cognate languages in turn. So you could gain an advantage in learning Sanskrit, for example, by learning German, Russian, and Greek first (as I have). Or you could learn Sanskrit first, as many secondary school students in India have done. But while learning each language, you might still ask yourself, "What texts am I going to read, or what conversations will I have, now that I know this language?" Sanskrit doesn't have a particularly high degree of utility, if that is what you are looking for in a new language, for day-by-day communication today. 3) Finnish is not an Indo-European language, so it is not cognate to Sanskrit, and therefore learning Sanskrit doesn't provide much advantage for learning Finnish. Come on, get the basis facts right. Learning Estonian would provide a huge boost for learning Finnish, of course. Learning Hungarian, Turkish, or even Mongolian would provide more remote advantages for learning Finnish. 4) Learning Tamil, Malayalam, or other languages of south India usually categorized as Dravidian (not cognate with Indo-European) languages just might give you a deeper understanding of India and its cultural heritage than the same effort spent learning Sanskrit. That's something to think about if you like India and its culture, as I do. 5) If you would like to learn a language that maps well in its linguistic structure to first-order logic notation, I strongly recommend Chinese (Modern Standard Chinese or some other Sinitic language) over any Indo-European language, including Sanskrit. All languages have arbitrary grammatical rules. Strictly speaking, no language is more "logical" than any other. But if you like a one-to-one correspondence between spoken language sentence structure and the usual first-order logic notation, Chinese is a good place to start.
- the_af 13y ago
wirrbel 13y ago
its great that such a resource exists. However when you want to learn a language that is still used and has similar grammar features you might want to opt for something like icelandic or polish. Then also Turkish (although not indo-european) might be interesting since it has a really logical and regular grammar.
deleted 13y ago
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akprasad 13y ago
Oh, hey, I'm on Hacker News. I'm surprised and a little embarrassed to see my site here, but I'll take the opportunity to address some of the things y'all have mentioned. To people proposing language alternatives: a totally fair point, and more power to you. I made this site back in college when I was studying Sanskrit for the first time, and I was disappointed by the lack of resources available online. The site started as a series of study notes and sort of mutated into a "course" ... but that course is incomplete and has been in desperate need of repair for some time. About the PHP errors: yeah, sorry about that! I started out with PHP because I knew pretty much nothing about web programming and needed something that "just worked." The new version of the site, which has been in development hell for a year, is in Flask (Python). I haven't touched the PHP stuff in two years, and I usually need gloves and a whole lot of disinfectant to do so. Why learn online: because the books are usually disappointing or expensive. Why Sanskrit: I just find it particularly beautiful. The statement that r0h1n took issue with is stated grandiosely, but I stand by it. On "Hindutva nonsense": I empathize strongly with their motivations, but I agree that most of the ink spilled in the name of Sanskrit is vacuous and hyperbolic. For those wondering about the fuss: I particularly enjoy kāvya [1], usually because it's just beautiful poetry [2] but also because it shows off some fancy linguistic acrobatics, the likes of which I haven't seen in any other language [3]. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavya [2]: Citation needed, but I like Kālidāsa in particular. One of the least horrible translations of one of his most beautiful works: http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sha/sha17.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sha/sha17.htm [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_ingenuity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_ing... for some examples.
laichzeit0 13y ago
One of the reasons I'd like to, time permitting, learn Sanskrit would be to enjoy the Upanishads, which my favorite philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, regarded so highly: "If the reader has also received the benefit of the Vedas, the access to which by means of the Upanishads is in my eyes the greatest privilege which this still young century (1818) may claim before all previous centuries, if then the reader, I say, has received his initiation in primeval Indian wisdom, and received it with an open heart, he will be prepared in the very best way for hearing what I have to tell him. It will not sound to him strange, as to many others, much less disagreeable; for I might, if it did not sound conceited, contend that every one of the detached statements which constitute the Upanishads, may be deduced as a necessary result from the fundamental thoughts which I have to enunciate, though those deductions themselves are by no means to be found there."

78 points by yati 13y ago

I learnt sanskrit, when i was in school... very nice language actually.... I like reading short moral stories in sanskrit a lot.....!!!!

Ihmahr 13y ago

Php errors everywhere!

r4vik 13y ago
no, that's Sanskrit

r0h1n 13y ago

Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?

s-topper 13y ago
Why not?
- r0h1n 13y ago
  There's nearly an infinite amount of knowledge in the world. And each of us has a finite amount of time. Why not is not an answer. Of what use is Sanskrit to anyone who learns it? P.S. I say this as a person who was forced to study Sanskrit in school for three years.
  - s-topper 13y ago
    >>>>>>>Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online? >>>>>>>>There's nearly an infinite amount of knowledge in the world. And each of us has a finite amount of time. Why not is not an answer. You can apply that flawed reasoning to pretty much everything. It would've been a perfectly valid question if you had said "Why would I want to learn Sanskrit?". Please don't universalize your opinion by saying things like why would anyone want to learn Sanskrit online or offline.
    - r0h1n 13y ago
      I maintain that very few people have a reason to learn Sanskrit. It is a dead/dying language that will add zero value besides the esoteric joy of knowing a language for the sake of knowing it. If you feel that is not the case, please elucidate your reasons. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
      - svasan 13y ago
        And very few people have reason to learn LISP or programming languages, for that matter. (If we are generalizing, we might as well go the full length and include the entire world population) You seem to be mistaken that folks would learn a language for just the sake of knowing it. Far from it. Language is just a tool for communication of ideas. There have been some brilliant treatises, thoughts, ideas, and philosophies expressed in Sanskrit. Folks are more interested in accessing the thoughts and works in Sanskrit as opposed being infatuated with the technical aspects of the language.
  - eitally 13y ago
    As someone whose comparative religion BA was mostly spent comparing flavors of Indian religions, it was very helpful to have a basic understanding of Sanskrit. I don't "use" it now, but knowing it during the research phase of my life sure made the learning process smoother.
ximeng 13y ago
They try to answer that question here: http://www.learnsanskrit.org/introduction http://www.learnsanskrit.org/introduction "Its importance is plain: Sanskrit was once the most influential literary language in India, and texts written in the language could be understood by millions of people throughout the South Asian world. These texts contain profound meditations on every point on the spectrum of human concern: existence, reality, God, love, duty, marriage, war, sex, death, violence, laughter, beauty, perception, nature, anatomy, urbanity, ritual, desire, food, purpose, meaning, and language, among hundreds of others. Moreover, Sanskrit texts are the repository of non-modern modes of thought, and they present distinct conceptions of the world that are often at odds with the understanding we have today. By learning how people used to think, we better understand both ourselves and the world we have inherited. "By learning this language, you open the door to more than three thousand years of intellectual history, both in India and beyond."
- r0h1n 13y ago
  > "By learning this language, you open the door to more than three thousand years of intellectual history, both in India and beyond." What does that even mean? Indian history, intellectual or not, isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators. As someone who was forced to learn Sanskrit in school for 3 years, I'll repeat: it has zero value unless you happen to be a researcher or a linguist.
  - chattoraj 13y ago
    >isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators Over-dramatizing the other guy's statement does not constitute a response. Even ignoring the religious angle, Sanskrit was the primary language of literature, science and philosophy in India for over a millennium. Surely a person might want to read some of that without being employed as a researcher. (And before you ask, most of it hasn't been translated and will probably never be translated. See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/pollock_pub/classics.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/pollock_... )
    - 13y ago
primitivesuave 13y ago
Many Hindus chant in Sanskrit for religious/ceremonial purposes, e.g. Chapter 15 of the Bhagavad Gita is often chanted before eating a meal (http://www.asitis.com/15/ http://www.asitis.com/15/). It's useful to understand what the Sanskrit words mean, although there are English translations for virtually all Sanskrit texts.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  If you're talking about the shlokas most commonly recited by average people, they may amount to maybe 10-20 lines. Learning their meaning will take at best one hour of research/effort. Learning Sanskrit to understand the meaning of a shloka is like learning Latin because you came across 'Cogito, Ergo Sum' or 'Veni, Vidi, Vici' on some blog. Both are pointless overkill.
  - 1457389 13y ago
    This average people comment isn't consistent with what I am familiar with. I regularly come across people, especially in the older generations, who have memorized literally pages of verse that they may not necessarily understand fully. The older generations in general in India seem to be multilingual as a rule and deeply interested in Vedic philosophy and ancient Indian history. Case in point the recent success of those Shivva books.
slaxman 13y ago
I am a ployglot and know several indian and foreign languages. My favourite is Sanskrit. Why? Once I learnt Sanskrit, esp. the grammar, learning other languages was really easy. You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit.
- chattoraj 13y ago
  > You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit. Your claims are a subset of the “everything comes from India” school of BSology.[1] German is related to Sanskrit but does not descend from it.[2] Finnish belongs to a different language family entirely.[3] [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5QgeCL1fs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5QgeCL1fs [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages
- donniezazen 13y ago
  How do you practice or make yourself not forget the several languages you know? I find it really hard to be proficient in a language unless you live among native speakers?
  - srik 13y ago
    There is a small village in India which still speaks Sanskrit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattur
- angerman 13y ago
  Could you please elaborate on this a little more? How did German and Finnish derive from Sanskrit? Could you give examples?
  - h1karu 13y ago
    Russian too.
yati 13y ago
From your comments, this is like asking "Why would someone, programmer or not, want to learn Lisp online?". The answer: because they want to, because they might find it interesting. They don't have to ask you. You may not like something, but that is your preference. Don't impose it on us.
- melling 13y ago
  You can learn Lisp and do real work with it. It has commercial value. It's not some ancient dead language.
  - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
    Ah FUD against Sanskrit. Thought I would see those only in Indian politics. Nice to see that on HN too. Do you, the no-nonsense hyper-practical man, smirk at mathematicians who study pure theory?
    - melling 13y ago
      I was simply pointing out that the analogy is not a good one. I have no problem learning Sanskrit for the pure enjoyment.
      - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
        Sanskrit is not a dead language. Enough with the FUD. At least it is more intellectual than current day colonial languages like Spanish.
  - yati 13y ago
    The parent has been commenting asking people why they want to learn Sanskrit when there is "infinitely many other" things to learn about. I bet that you can not learn Lisp and sail through a great programming career. And I really don't think Sanskrit is a "dead" language - it is important to far too many people to be called dead.
- pessimizer 13y ago
monster_group 13y ago
For the sheer joy of it. I learnt Sanskrit in middle school formally yet superficially. About a year ago I decided I wanted to get rid of the 'superficial' part and devoured several Sanskrit grammar books including this website. It has been a very joyful journey and I feel very happy when I am able to read and understand the only Sanskrit newspaper in the world. I don't know about you but for me that's a good enough reason. Sometimes one makes the journey because the path is so much fun even though the destination may be uninteresting.
cscurmudgeon 13y ago
I imagine people like you breezing through life maximizing some objective function, never waiting to admire poetry or relish a moment, only to die at the end. Hyper-practical no-nonsense men questioning the value of everything for everyone. (The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons.)
- ksk 13y ago
  >The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons. Okay, give me 10 reasons.
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    I'd be satisfied with 5. Maybe even 3.
  - trevelyan 13y ago
    (1) You are defusing a bomb, but the wires are tucked behind a casing on which there is a label written in Sanskrit and underlined in red. With only 2 minutes left before the bomb explodes, don't you wish you started the language earlier? (2) Women love Sanskrit. (3) You have a dream one day that seems more real than real. In it, you are standing in a desert and are approached by a man who seems intensely familiar. With a shock, you realize this is a flashback from a past life. And you know you would have something incredible to tell yourself... if only both of you spoke Sanskrit. (4) Academic research. (5) On a business trip to China, a question emerges about the etymological origins of certain Chinese characters, and whether they entered the language through Middle Indo-Aryan speakers. Flush with the answer from your knowledge of ancient Sanskrit, you are able to impress your hosts and secure the contract. (6) "Attention passengers, this is the captain speaking. While there is no need to worry, we do have to ask: is there anyone on this plane who happens to be a doctor, and also speaks Sanskrit?" (7) Your boss has outsourced development work on a new software platform to a team in Uttarakhand. The project was a disaster as predicted, but it is now essential to find someone - anyone - who is both local and able to read the commit log as well as Sanskrit-commented source code. (8) A software malfunction switches your phone's display and input languages to Sanskrit. Now how exactly are you planning to switch it back? And if you read Sanskrit, why would you ever want to? (9) You are working for Google, and tasked with organizing ALL of the world's information. (10) As a member of the TSA working to ensure aviation safety, you are responsible for screening Sanskrit speaking passengers, and conversing with them as part of general counter-terrorism screening measures. Can you really do that with only Pimsleur-level fluency?
laichzeit0 13y ago
Serious question, how many languages do you know and actively use? As someone who grew up bilingual I've found that there is a certain untranslatable element in any language, particular when it comes to poetry and humor. Why do you learn multiple programming languages? Why are there several types of text-editing systems? Put it to you this way: learning a new language can be as enlightening as learning functional programming for the first time in your life. Edit: I also want to add that I came across this website in the past http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html where the idea of a highly unambiguous natural language struck me as interesting. Sadly, I've subsequently read a lot of negative comments regarding "vedic" sciences here on HN. Something akin go what the Creationists have tried to do with the bible. But I nevertheless would like to spend a few months looking at Sanskrit grammar and making an opinion about it myself.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  Okay, serious answer: I can read and write proficiently in English and Hindi. I can speak proficiently in Malayalam. I can understand or business-converse in Kannada. I can understand about 75% of Tamil conversations. I learned Sanskrit in school. I've tried at various points to learn both French and Spanish using Rosetta Stone, but I gave up after the initial few weeks, probably because I was doing it alone. Does that make me "qualified" to comment on this HN thread?
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Depends on how you feel about the vedic "sciences."
nkuttler 13y ago
For the same reason you have other hobbies, they like it. You obviously wouldn't.
ateevchopra 13y ago
Because they say the knowledge of the whole universe is written in sanskrit in the vedas. Thousands of years the Indian sages researched about almost every topic and wrote this vedas. We would have been many years ahead if we could decode those teachings. Many lost, many still to be decoded. If people learn sanskrit, maybe someone will find its life purpose in this and do a big research on the old knowledge. Just saying. Anything is possible. knowledge is never in vain.
RestlessMind 13y ago
Why do you want to live? Questioning utility of anything in life is futile. People do what they do because they want to. Simple.
jimgardener 13y ago
Long time back I was interested in Indian Tantric stuff and found that most English translations (except those by Arthur Avalon) contained too many interpretations by the translator -some of them skewed :).So I got some original Sanskrit texts and tried to translate word by word .I couldn't progress much becoz you cannot understand the meaning of a sentence by just adding up the words- you need to learn the grammer.At that time I wished I had learned the language
involans 13y ago
Because it is an enjoyable pursuit. I would agree that it is not the most practical thing to do; but not everything need be practical. Incidentally - this course seems to be one of the better ones I've seen; it actually uses modern phonetic and segmental terminology instead of throwing people straight into sandhi with no explanation of why this happens.
kops 13y ago
As an Indian, 1. For the same reason as solving sudoku online i.e. for the joy of it. 2. Some interesting literature was written in Sanskrit. I may want to read that. 3. To be able to judge when a hindu preacher is bullshitting me. 4. To be able to critically analyze some of the religious stuff e.g. does the age of Sun god tally with what the modern physics tells us. 5. Its grammar expands my view of what is possible to express in a language. 6. For the same reason as pursuing archaeology. The words in a dead language can tell you a lot about the life when it was in common use. I see that you substantiate some of your views with a "P.S." that you were forced to learn it for 3 years. That means nothing. I learnt it for 5 years purely to pass exams but that hardly makes me qualified enough to start judging whether others should learn it or not. Nopes I don't know Sanskrit and it is not on my radar right now. But a while ago when I tried to learn German, faint memories from Sanskrit classes came quite handy(see #5 above).
- the_af 13y ago
  "For the joy of it" is probably the most important motive. For archeology is also good, though I assume a serious student of ancient languages won't learn from online guides.
mchaver 13y ago
Because they might not have access to offline Sanskrit resources.
tekalon 13y ago
As someone that has been meaning to learn, its a beautiful language and beautiful script. My motivation comes from a love of ancient history, so being able to read original texts make me happy.

wslh 13y ago

If you liked this post you might like this incredible sanskrit web site: http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/en/english-home/ http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/en/english-home/ It includes translation of sacred texts.

jaseemabid 13y ago

I wish the duolingo guys hire this fellow and make it easy for all of us :/

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Of_Prometheus 13y ago

This is a fantastic coincidence. Over the past few weeks, and especially today, my fiancée has been telling me how she has lost her familiarity with Sanskrit after many years. I've already showed her this website. The joy!

Techasura 13y ago

The point is what would you do after learning or may be spending real good amount of time with it, what is the real need. I learnt sanskrit for more than 6 years and have passed upto threeeteeya(an exam to test your sanskrit skill). When i learn something i should be able to converse about it with many people as i can and help spread the knowledge or information. But learning an old language like sanskrit. What i found after learning the language is there is a lot of history which doesn't fetch any real world gain to my career, my social life, my finances or even recognition from a worldwide community.

chattoraj 13y ago
Listen to this man. Anyone who studies a dead language for “real-world gain” will probably end up disappointed. The only real reason to learn is so you can read old books in that language. And you might get a few points of social prestige, but that alone generally won't make up for the hours and years you put into it.
rational_indian 13y ago
Tritiya just means third.

rlvesco7 13y ago

I always thought it was interesting that Sanskrit could almost be a computer language: http://uttishthabharata.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/sanskrit-programming/ http://uttishthabharata.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/sanskrit-pr...

wintageeil 13y ago

To people who wants to know how scientific Sanskrit language is and also about how we are missing it's essence: http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Sanskrit.htm http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Sanskrit.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cQ4hIG9w7c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cQ4hIG9w7c http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262393 http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262393 BTW, I am from OK and travelled to India in the context of ancient real values. Travelled to many parts of Himalayas and learned bit about the language, quite amazed how such a great language like Sanskrit really has lost its lime light. Many great prescriptions of Medicine, Science, and Astrology are hidden in the great language. I am not trying to convince anyone but just thought of sharing my thoughts. For those of you, who have learnt it at their schools mostly read it as subject, not really learned its real value.

tokenadult 13y ago

Oh, gosh, the usual Hindutva nonsense. Let me first of all dispel any notion that I don't like learning languages "for fun." See my Hacker News user profile for more details on what languages I have learned. I have learned enough facts about Sanskrit and the various languages that are written in the Devanagari alphabet to know 1) The written history of Sanskrit is much less that 3,000 years long. (The historiography of India is hard, because most of the writing materials used in ancient India were perishable, and thus much less preserved than the written records of other parts of the world that are equally old, but plainly the Vedas and other texts from ancient India are less than 3,000 years old.) 2) Yes, Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, which means it brings to mind features of other Indo-European languages. Each cognate language makes it easier to learn other cognate languages in turn. So you could gain an advantage in learning Sanskrit, for example, by learning German, Russian, and Greek first (as I have). Or you could learn Sanskrit first, as many secondary school students in India have done. But while learning each language, you might still ask yourself, "What texts am I going to read, or what conversations will I have, now that I know this language?" Sanskrit doesn't have a particularly high degree of utility, if that is what you are looking for in a new language, for day-by-day communication today. 3) Finnish is not an Indo-European language, so it is not cognate to Sanskrit, and therefore learning Sanskrit doesn't provide much advantage for learning Finnish. Come on, get the basis facts right. Learning Estonian would provide a huge boost for learning Finnish, of course. Learning Hungarian, Turkish, or even Mongolian would provide more remote advantages for learning Finnish. 4) Learning Tamil, Malayalam, or other languages of south India usually categorized as Dravidian (not cognate with Indo-European) languages just might give you a deeper understanding of India and its cultural heritage than the same effort spent learning Sanskrit. That's something to think about if you like India and its culture, as I do. 5) If you would like to learn a language that maps well in its linguistic structure to first-order logic notation, I strongly recommend Chinese (Modern Standard Chinese or some other Sinitic language) over any Indo-European language, including Sanskrit. All languages have arbitrary grammatical rules. Strictly speaking, no language is more "logical" than any other. But if you like a one-to-one correspondence between spoken language sentence structure and the usual first-order logic notation, Chinese is a good place to start.

the_af 13y ago

wirrbel 13y ago

its great that such a resource exists. However when you want to learn a language that is still used and has similar grammar features you might want to opt for something like icelandic or polish. Then also Turkish (although not indo-european) might be interesting since it has a really logical and regular grammar.

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akprasad 13y ago

Oh, hey, I'm on Hacker News. I'm surprised and a little embarrassed to see my site here, but I'll take the opportunity to address some of the things y'all have mentioned. To people proposing language alternatives: a totally fair point, and more power to you. I made this site back in college when I was studying Sanskrit for the first time, and I was disappointed by the lack of resources available online. The site started as a series of study notes and sort of mutated into a "course" ... but that course is incomplete and has been in desperate need of repair for some time. About the PHP errors: yeah, sorry about that! I started out with PHP because I knew pretty much nothing about web programming and needed something that "just worked." The new version of the site, which has been in development hell for a year, is in Flask (Python). I haven't touched the PHP stuff in two years, and I usually need gloves and a whole lot of disinfectant to do so. Why learn online: because the books are usually disappointing or expensive. Why Sanskrit: I just find it particularly beautiful. The statement that r0h1n took issue with is stated grandiosely, but I stand by it. On "Hindutva nonsense": I empathize strongly with their motivations, but I agree that most of the ink spilled in the name of Sanskrit is vacuous and hyperbolic. For those wondering about the fuss: I particularly enjoy kāvya [1], usually because it's just beautiful poetry [2] but also because it shows off some fancy linguistic acrobatics, the likes of which I haven't seen in any other language [3]. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavya [2]: Citation needed, but I like Kālidāsa in particular. One of the least horrible translations of one of his most beautiful works: http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sha/sha17.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sha/sha17.htm [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_ingenuity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_ing... for some examples.

laichzeit0 13y ago

One of the reasons I'd like to, time permitting, learn Sanskrit would be to enjoy the Upanishads, which my favorite philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, regarded so highly: "If the reader has also received the benefit of the Vedas, the access to which by means of the Upanishads is in my eyes the greatest privilege which this still young century (1818) may claim before all previous centuries, if then the reader, I say, has received his initiation in primeval Indian wisdom, and received it with an open heart, he will be prepared in the very best way for hearing what I have to tell him. It will not sound to him strange, as to many others, much less disagreeable; for I might, if it did not sound conceited, contend that every one of the detached statements which constitute the Upanishads, may be deduced as a necessary result from the fundamental thoughts which I have to enunciate, though those deductions themselves are by no means to be found there."